Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey guys,

Only just discovered aquaponics the other day, so still very brand new to all this but the wheels are in motion. This may be a silly question, so feel free to laugh out loud

Probably the major issue we have where we live is that we have no road access to the house, everything comes in by boat. So anything I can do to reduce the amount of heavy material I have to bring in would be great. I was wondering if you could use styrofoam beads (ie bean bag beans) as growbed media? For example, you could fill the growbed 200mm deep with styrofoam, and then have a layer of gravel 50-100mm on top to stop the beads blowing or floating away.

Cheers

I think it would be difficult to get this to work, even though putting gravel on top wont really stop the beans underneath floating into your media guard and either blocking it or getting through.

I also am lead to believe styrofoam has fire retardants in it that is harmful to fish.

Hydroton is fairly light.....although expensive.

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The flood & drain action results in the gravel falling to the bottom... and then the beads jsut go everywhere... including into the fish tank... pumps etc...

Sorry, but it has been tried... including by myself.... with dismal failure....

Same kind of thing happens with perlite.... but like perlite... you might be able to use them in a wicking bed arrangement...

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Fresh By Nature - Distributor of Aquaponic Systems and Products in NSW
http://www.freshbynature.com.au

Thanks for the replies.

How about this then. Styrofoam beads underneath, covered by geofabric, with gravel on top. You could create deeper pockets of gravel where you planned to have plants with larger root systems and keep the gravel shallower elsewhere.

As you can probably tell, I start to get upset if I have to load anything heavier than a case of VB into the tinny

I think a 50L bag of hydroton is not much heavier than a box of VB, although you'll probably need more than one.